September 1st, 2008
It is rare that a pick will wow me as much as this one did, but this is just amazing. Ubiquity is a plugin for Firefox in early beta that could change the way that you use a browser. I could describe it, but instead watch the video below and be wowed like I was.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
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August 24th, 2008
They say that writing helps people through difficult times, I thought I would give it a go. Many of you know that Rebekah and I have three cats, Purrball, Star and Hera. In the last week, Hera had a major change in personality for reasons yet unknown to us. The long and the short of it is, she now attacks the other two cats as if she does not know them with little to no provocation. She did this first Monday night and then again on Friday. We have to keep her isolated, which causes her to cry throughout the night. Because of this, we are boarding her until we can get into the vet this Tuesday. All of this information is purely factual, and some of you may say that all of this work is not worth it for a cat. I won’t argue that she is “just a cat, ” but the fact of the matter is, she is part of our family, and as our family will grow in March, it is difficult to possibly lose a member of that family now.
I want to describe Hera a little now to share with you some of what makes Rebekah and I happy every day. Hera has more personality that Purrball and Star put together. We love both Purrball and Star just as much as Hera, but I know that Rebekah and I could not handle three cats with as much personality as Hera. In the morning when Rebekah eats breakfast, Hera hops up next to her to say and to try and sneak a bit of breakfast. Hera doesn’t even like what Rebekah is having, she is just so curious to see what it is. And that is Hera’s defining trait, curiousity, sometimes to the point of annoyance, but always to the smile of Rebekah or myself. She has this amazing ability to make either of us smile, even in difficult times. That is what makes not having her here so tough, she brings a joy to our lives that cannot be replaced easily.
We still don’t know what will happen with Hera. Rebekah and I are hoping and praying she will be able to come home and go back to normal, that it is some goofy physical thing that can be fixed and next weekend I can write about how great it is. If that isn’t the case though, I hope that others can think of Rebekah and me and of Hera too, that we call can find life just as joyous as we did two weeks ago.
Hera in the Fridge
You can click on the picture above to find all of the pictures on Flickr of Hera.
P.S. Sorry if this makes you cry Rebekah 
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August 22nd, 2008
I hate to put something that is Windows only as my pick, but Photosynth is too damn cool to avoid. Microsoft is allowing people to upload pictures of locations and spaces and then using magic technology, creating 3D experiences for them. You do have to have a MS Passport account to sign up, but after you do, you can create your own experiences as well on there using your own photos. It is still buggy at times and requires IE, but it is worth a look just to see what can be done.
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August 16th, 2008
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made this a pick yet, so I figured I had to throw it out there. Pandora is a internet radio service that learns what you like and don’t like in an effort to introduce you to new music. You start off by giving it an artist you like, then plays a song by them. After that first song, it makes a guess about another song you might like. You can then give it a thumbs up or thumbs down to help Pandora learn. This keeps going as long as you like, occasionally going back to songs you marked with a thumbs up. The best part, it is all free, with the limitation that it only is available in the US and UK. If you are a music person and havn’t taken a look at Pandora, give it a whirl.
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August 11th, 2008
Every summer there seems to be one song that becomes unexpectedly popular, and is typically a one-hit wonder. For example, in 2006 we had Hey There Delilah. You couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing it that summer. It is a good song, but I bet you can’t stand hearing it. All of those are defining traits for the Song of the Summer. Since it is August already and I have been listening to some radio on our travels over the last three weeks, I spent sometime trying to think what this summer’s song is. After some pondering, I have decided on Time to Pretend by MGMT. Not to say that the rest of their album isn’t decent, but it won’t catch on like Time to Pretend and could prove to be a one-hit wonder. Now I realize my music world is a bit different than others, so feel free to throw out other songs as your Song of the Summer
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August 11th, 2008
Rebekah and I have been tossing around a shared movie database where we could keep track of the movies we have, what we have watched, and an easy way to pick a movie to watch. After some planning, it was going to be an elaborate web database project. Thinking that would take a fair amount of time, I investigated a program that might be able to handle this already and stumbled upon DVDPedia from Bruji. For 18 bucks, you get searching and importing data from the web, a customizable interface and smart folders to make that list of romance movies under 90 minutes. As a bonus, Bruji also released a free app for the iPhone called PocketPedia that does the same stuff and can sync with the desktop application. If you are trying to organize stuff and maxed out the usefulness of the Amazon Media Collection, I would recommend checking this out.
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August 8th, 2008
On my 6 month recap, there was a commenter that said they has been diaapponted by the new Death Cab for Cutie album, Narrow Stairs. Now I have not been a big Death Cab fan and have actually just recently really investigated there past catalog, so I have a different perspective than there long time listeners. That does afford me an interesting opportunity though, where I can make the case for the album to both new and old listeners of the band.
I dare say this is the top Death Cab album, however I doubt many long time fans will agree. I think the quality of the music is just as good as their previous albums, it is the content and establishment of the songs that works well for me. Take the first single, I Will Possess Your Heart. It runs with a 4 minute instrumental intro before getting to the lyrics of a jadded admirer turned stalker. The 4 minute intro can be read as the normal persuit of a lover, escalating to when the lyrics kick in at which point the person is now a stalker and fully creepy.
Almost more haunting is Grapevine Fires which initially sounds like a family escaping the seasonal fires in California, but on further listens could be the arsonist admiring his work from afar. The album just aches with common and not so common troubles of the Gen X population living in California. Does it get a bit drab at times, sure, but this is where the quality of the music really lifts the album up to be really fantastic. If you have not listened or have given up on the album, I encourage you to take another listen. You might just find something there that you were not expecting.
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August 3rd, 2008
This pick will not be for everyone, as it is kind of different. Fuzzy Clock allows you to replace the clock on the menu bar for your Mac with a human readable display. For example, instead of saying 8:25, it would write out twentyfive past eight. It allows you to customize it a bunch of different ways, including different localizations so your clock could be in German if you like. It is free and kind of fun.
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July 29th, 2008
A belated Pick of the Week, I chose a really useful tool for all sorts of web design and development, Firebug. This is really useful to inspect page elements for CSS styles, but really shines when inspecting Javascript errors. You can view the console easily and really debug Javascript problems, something that was very troublesome in the past. If you are doing any sort of web design or development, I highly recommend Firebug, a free extension for Firefox.
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July 25th, 2008
One week with the iPod Touch and I feel it is time to share some apps that I have found interesting or useful. All of these are free apps, I have not found an app that I have wanted to actually purchase yet.
Pandora - For those of you familiar with Pandora, you will love this app because it brings everything Pandora has to offer to your iPod or iPhone. You can listen to any of your stations, thumbs up, thumbs down, etc. If you are not familiar, go to pandora.com and check it out.
NetNewsWire - While not perfect, it does fit well into my news reading workflow. Using the NewsGator service, I can sync what I have read on either the iPod or my Mac. The browsing experience isn’t great on the iPod, but I can save items to the Clippings to read later on my Mac.
Twittelator - One of 4 or 5 Twitter apps, this is my preferred one. It has no ads and doesn’t try to do a bunch of other things. Simple and works well, that is what I am looking for in a Twitter app.
Labyrinth LE - The Lite (read: free) edition of Labyrinth. This is a great example of the accelerometer in action as you tilt the device to move the ball around just like you would a real labyrinth board. The physics of the ball are also amazing, making this a great app to show off the abilities of the device.
Mobile News Network - Basically a pull from the AP of stories nationwide and locally. It has a nice collection of the day in pictures as well. I like this better than the NYTimes app because of it’s simplicity.
Wordpress - The official application to post to a WordPress blog, this has most of the features of the standard web posting. The only thing it is missing is the ability to do rich text editing of posts, meaning you have to know basic HTML to do any linking or whatnot.
I should note all of these are first generation applications. It is pretty impressive to see this much quality stuff initially and it just whets my appetite for bigger and better things to come down the line in the next 6 months or so.
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This is the blog for Mark Ahrens, a web kinda guy living in Iowa. You will find posts about my life, technology and music, in addition to a sprinkling of other things as well.
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